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# Things I can do
- URL: https://pete.news/hellocomputer/things-i-can-do/
- Published: 2023-03-11T21:30:59.000Z
- Updated: 2024-03-25T17:43:03.000Z
- Author: Pete Carr
- Tags: HelloComputer, #ToSort, #HelloComputer, Autism, autistic, photography, swimming, #wordpress

This week I had a few photos featured in an exhibition at a top UK photography gallery. The project looks at the joy and community of these swimmers in the strange industrial landscape of the River Mersey. My photos were chosen by [Sony World Photography Judge, Lindsay Taylor](https://www.worldphoto.org/blogs/24-11-20/under-review-lindsay-taylor). What? I entered hoping to win something because why else would you enter a competition, but I didn’t expect that to happen. 

A complex, stressful week has left me running completely on empty. The slightest thing breaks me. I had to make a choice of beer or water, and I couldn’t. It felt like too much responsibility, too much pressure. There are no spoons. I’m broke. Yet, my photos are in an exhibition. What does that mean?

It’s a fascinating look at my disability, as life as an autistic person. Sometimes, unexpectedly, I can be overwhelmed by the world and its noisy chaos. I cannot understand how everyone is seemingly fine with noisy restaurants or the chaos of a city centre at night with music spilling out of every building and LED lights begging for your attention. Hasn’t the pandemic made the case for a quieter world? I wish it had. Occasionally, I can be overwhelmed because I chose to go out wearing a skirt and makeup in a world that bans drag artists for doing genuinely nice performances. I’m not doing drag. The people who would happily attack a drag artist in front of children to protect them from hearing a family fun story are probably not going to wait around for me to explain my identity. My brain is constantly running in flight not fight mode and I have to push back against it every day. I’m exhausted, and yet my photos are in an exhibition. 

Standing nipple deep in cold water while taking photos on a non-waterproof camera, I made some work that is now exhibited. I’m absolutely fine with working that way. How? How?! Practice maybe? A few years of learning about the river and better understanding what I can do? Could be. But haven’t I been doing the same as an average human for 44 years now? Haven’t I practiced being in the world long enough to be OK with it? 

I’ve written about this before and I find it fascinating. I can [swim around in January in my tiny swimming briefs with a purple beard, and lipstick on, feeling confident](https://hellocomputer.co/3rd-anniversary-of-cold-water-swimming/). If anyone tried to say anything about my appearance, I know that they would not have the confidence to be me. Somehow, I’m good at this. It empowers me. People I spoke to at the exhibition launch last night thought I was bananas for doing cold water swims. Yet, I do, and I can, when I notice my alarm. How am I, [Mixter](https://publishing.rcseng.ac.uk/doi/pdf/10.1308/rcsbull.2021.141) Autistic over here, doing that with confidence but nothing else in my life? Is it a sign that other aspects of my life are actually not for me? Should I become a cold water portrait photographer? 

It’s so strange. I can do things others can’t but today while shopping I just wanted to burst into flames, burn everything and then burst into tears partly to put the flames out but also because arg ahhh I don’t know! Stress? Autistic overload? I know I should be kinder to myself about having less mental energy than others, about what I can and cannot do. If I could just figure out how to take the confidence of one thing and apply it to others, maybe I could do more? 

Should I seriously think hard about finding another path in life? Move to Scotland, learn to knit and photograph the whisky, knitting and swimming of Scotland? 

I have aspirations of swimming the River Mersey. Perhaps I will one day. I feel as though I could. It’s the same feeling I had about running and went from 5 km to a marathon. There is definitely a side of me that when I lean into it, I am able to do things others can’t. It’s frustrating that the world is so chaotic and noisy, I cannot hear my brain when it’s trying to tell me what I should be leaning into. 

The photography exhibition, [LCR Photo Awards 2023](https://openeye.org.uk/whatson/2023-liverpool-city-region-photo-awards-winners/ "LCR Photo Awards 2023"), is on at the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool. A diverse and inclusive series of photography.